Abstract
The current report examined the relationship between implicit self-evaluation and ingroup evaluation. Although previous research has indicated that explicit self-evaluation predicts ingroup evaluation on each trait dimension, there has been much less emphasis on how implicit self-evaluation and ingroup evaluation are mutually interrelated. On the basis of the theories which emphasize the role of the individual self in ingroup evaluation (e.g., Cadinu & Rothbart, 1996), we predicted that implicit evaluation of the self would become a better predictor for implicit ingroup evaluation. Forty undergraduates participated in the study. We used the typical minimal group procedure (Tajfel et al., 1971), and all participants were randomly assigned to artificial laboratory groups. Implicit self-evaluation and ingroup evaluation were measured with Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998). The analyses revealed that the self and ingroup were more associated with positive traits than negative traits, indicating that the self and ingroup were both positively biased. These results are in line with the findings of previous literature, but there was no significant correlation between overall implicit self-evaluation and ingroup evaluation. Thus, the overall pattern of results in the present study was inconsistent with our prediction, but, nonetheless, implicit self-evaluation significantly predicted implicit ingroup evaluation on some Big Five trait dimensions. Namely, implicit self-evaluation was positively correlated with implicit ingroup evaluation on extroversion and openness dimensions. In contrast, they were not significantly correlated with each other on neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness dimensions. The discussion argued that these differences may be partly due to the significance of participant's evaluation of each trait dimension.
